Food Fight IV Foodie Michael Pollan wrote in The New York Times that California's Prop 37 requiring labeling of boiotech foods is not about food safety or the environment, but about "the power of Big Food." In other words, it is politics. Foodies really believe that the conventional food industry "controls" consumption rather than responds to consumer desires. It is a baffling argument in a transparent, market-driven society. Nonetheless, the lesson for the conventional food industry is that it will have to spend a lot more money than it has been to ensure consumers hear its side of the story. That is what is happening with Prop 37 in California, where educating voters has apparently nearly doubled the number of opponents and cut support...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. weather is getting more attention this week as conditions vary greatly across the western, central, and eastern corn belts, with the different regions battling dryness and too much rain simultaneously. The ProFarmer Crop Tour began today in Indiana and Nebrask...
Key Takeaways: Argentina is on pace for a record corn crop and record exports in the current marketing year, with abundant supplies likely to keep the country highly competitive in global export markets. Argentina’s record exportable surplus is allowing it to offer highly competitive pri...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.